29 October 2014

I loathe Christie Creme, but he got some praise today and you may see pigs flying by your window holding signs that say, ‘Repent! The end is nigh!’ when you find out from whom:It’s not hard to take sides in the Battle of Ebola Quarantine.

In the blue corner, weighing in at over 300 pounds, is big, nasty bullyboy Governor from New Jersey, Chris Chriiiisssstttiieeee.

In the red corner, weighing in at less than 150 pounds, is kind, caring, gentle, heroine nurse Kaci Hickox.At this point the fight would be stopped, right?

Kaci Hickox has made herself a media sensation trying to fight against her bola quarantine.

But Christie is the real hero, doing what any sane person would have when presented with a nurse with Hickox’s background who had a fever upon landing from America.

Christie is not a man who engenders much empathy these days.

Since Bridge-gate, when his vile staffers closed America’s busiest bridge to damage a political opponent, he’s seen his Presidential aspirations burn up faster than an Ebola fever.

But I’ve always liked his brash, tough-talking, no-nonsense style and on the issue of Ebola quarantine, Christie is 100% right.

Nurse Hickox, I keep being assured, is one of the most selfless human beings on Planet Earth. On the podium of public opinion right now she’d probably give Mother Teresa a run as Greatest Nurse in History.

Really?

Let’s consider some hard facts.She has just returned from Sierra Leone, one of the most Ebola-ravaged countries in the world.More than 4,000 people have contracted the virus there so far, of whom 1,341 have died. It is estimated 5 people an HOUR are currently being infected and that rate is doubling every 20 days.

On October 19, the World Health Organisation reported there had been 129 cases of health workers in Sierra Leone infected with Ebola, of whom 95 had died – an appalling 73% fatality rate.

Nurse Hickox, working for the wonderful Doctors Without Borders, spent the last few weeks directly treating Ebola patients, immersing herself at the sharpest, most infectious end of the very epicentre of this dreadful disease.

When she flew back to America on Friday, Nurse Hickox explained to screeners at Newark Liberty airport where she had been and what she had been doing.Understandably, they took her away for further questioning and she had her temperature taken. It showed a fever of 101 degrees.

Now, imagine you’re Chris Christie – Governor of the State where an American nurse has just presented with a fever after treating Ebola patients in West Africa.

A few days previously, there was a huge national outcry after another American medic, New York doctor Craig Spencer, ignored instructions to self-quarantine after also flying in from West Africa – and went around the city on the subway, using Uber cabs, eating in restaurants and bowling.

The day after he did all this, blissfully content in the self-diagnosed knowledge that he was ‘asymptomatic’ and therefore ‘not contagious’ – Dr Spencer woke up with a fever and tested positive for Ebola.

(It’s now emerged that he lied to officials, insisting he had stayed inside his home since arriving back in America. Detectives only discovered the truth when they checked his credit card statement.)

Chris Christie did what any sane, rational person would surely do in his position: he immediately ordered Nurse Hickox to be placed in quarantine while further examinations were carried out.

The conditions she was kept in were not exactly Four Seasons quality, granted. But nor were there anywhere near as bad as the horrific working environment she had endured in in Sierra Leone.

Nurse Hickox was tested several times for Ebola and the results were negative. Her fever stopped and after 65 hours in quarantine she was allowed to go home to Maine.

She’s been asked to stay inside that home for the full recommended 21 day quarantine, but she is refusing.

Dr Craig Spencer was also astonishingly selfish, running around New York City, after returning from his heroic work.

Instead, Nurse Hickox has lawyered up, and hit the airwaves. She’s become a media superstar, a Joan of Arc heroine courageously battling the outrageous treatment of a cold-hearted political barbarian.

Nurse Hickox wants us to know she’s ‘outraged’, ‘demeaned’, ‘insulted’, ‘violated’ and ‘horrified’ by what’s happened to her. It’s a ‘shocking breach’ of her human rights and an ‘assault’ on her Constitutional freedoms.

I predict a book, a TV mini-series – perhaps even a movie, with Jennifer Lawrence playing The Ebola Angel.

My own view is that Nurse Hickox, like Dr Spencer, is an exceptionally brave person whose work in West Africa has been quite astonishingly selfless.

In that sense, she is absolutely a heroine.

But as we saw with Dr Spencer, her behaviour since she returned to America has been equally astonishing – in its reckless selfishness.

If I were running this Ebola fight in America – and I am just as qualified to do so as the newly-appointed Ebola Czar – I wouldn’t trust America’s medics to ‘self-quarantine’ because as we have seen, they will either refuse to comply or lie about it.I would make a 21-day quarantine mandatory for every single doctor and nurse who returns from treating Ebola patients in Africa.

No excuses, no exceptions, no succumbing to political point-scoring pressure.

Chris Christie’s instincts about this are spot on. He’s been bold and decisive as President Obama has dithered and prevaricated.

An Ebola epidemic would devastate America. Why on earth would anyone charged with trying to prevent it happening take any risk, however small that risk may be?

Nurse Hickox should stop her pathetic squealing, fire her lawyer, get off TV, thank her lucky stars she’s not got Ebola, and stay inside her damn home for the next couple of weeks to ensure there’s not a tiny scintilla of chance she could infect a fellow American.

This advice is not in any medical journal. It’s called ‘common sense’.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

I completely agree with you. I'm a Democrat and as we all know Democrats are surveyed to be more highly educated than the redneck backwash that generally votes GOP. That said, my opinion is that allowing a woman who has been exposed to Ebola out of quarantine is just asking for it by setting a very dangerous precedent. She should have done her 21 days. SHE may not come down with it, but what about people like the doctor in NYC who lied about staying home. She has taken a stand for something which could kill 50% of our population if we follow this precedent over sheer selfishness and fifteen minutes of fame. If others die in America of Ebola because of her precedent, I hold her personally responsible for all of the deaths.